Page:Plays by Jacinto Benavente - Third series (IA playstranslatedf03benauoft).pdf/111

. Is that all? You don't suppose you can make me hate you with a few simple truths like that? The times are not propitious to Neros or Elagabaluses; neither do they produce Shakespeares, though you may both have written the same sonnets. There is one, too, copied from the Italian of the seventeenth century

. [Greatly incensed] That's a lie! I steal from no man. Those stories were invented by my detractors. I proved that Italian sonnet was a forgery, made up to annoy me. I proved it, and nobody believed me. Only a fool would repeat such a story, and you are a fool, too, if you say so!

. [Laughing] My dear Harry, you see it is easier to provoke a poet with the truth than an Emperor.

. Blockhead!

. Come, my dear Harry. Why not arrange something diabolic for this evening, something grandiose? Surely you have credit for more than five hundred francs. Hello, Nunu! Hello, Tommy!

. Highness!

. Sit down. Put on your hats. Have you been on yet?

. No, ours is next to the last number. We were waiting for you.

. Will everybody be there? And your Donina?

. Donina…

. I told you that you didn't want her to come. Now I see I was right. You want to pass yourself off for a cynic. "Piccola Donina!" you say. "Bah! me n'infischio. I am tired of her!" And all the while you love her and mean to keep her for yourself.